


Serendipity

by chicafrom3



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Artificial Intelligence, Cargo Shipping, Community: 1sentence, Dysfunctional Relationships, Inequality, Other, Sentience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-17
Updated: 2006-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicafrom3/pseuds/chicafrom3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the sake of convenience, the <i>Maru</i> is referred to as "he" throughout. Prompts arranged numerically, not chronologically. Divergent timeline.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Serendipity

**Author's Note:**

> For the sake of convenience, the _Maru_ is referred to as "he" throughout. Prompts arranged numerically, not chronologically. Divergent timeline.

01\. Ring  
Andromeda prides herself on being able to run rings around any other High Guard ship of the line; a homemade salvage ship that barely runs most of the time doesn't even compare.

02\. Hero  
In his own way, the _Maru_ is a hero, too: kept a family on its feet even as it came apart at the seams.

03\. Memory  
 _Andromeda_ remembers over three hundred years with cool military precision, while the _Maru_ remembers some forty years with warmth and familiarity.

04\. Box  
He's not as smart or as clever or as self-aware as she is, but he still doesn't appreciate it when she refers to him as a box.

05\. Run  
Harper keeps them both running, and sometimes they get jealous and competitive over who the engineer loves more.

06\. Hurricane  
Andromeda's a hurricane when she's mad, and he watches it all, awed and amazed by her strength and grace.

07\. Wings  
They don't need wings to fly.

08\. Cold  
Space is cold, even when you're built for it, but a full crew walking your decks can help alleviate that—for both of them.

09\. Red  
The blue hair was awful, but he loved the red streaks her avatar put in her hair—and he missed Beka's red hair.

10\. Drink  
She drinks in the atmosphere of having a family on her decks, a family instead of a military crew, this family that he's loved and sheltered for so long.

11\. Midnight  
They stand in stark contrast to each other, the battered homey makeshift _Maru_ and the shining silver avenger _Andromeda_ , like high noon and midnight, like their joint crew: soldier, spacer, mudfoot, uber, priest, and starshine.

12\. Temptation  
Harper offers to upgrade the _Maru_ AI to a full-blown personification; the _Maru_ and Andromeda both hope Beka will say _yes_.

13\. View  
They both love seeing the glittering strands of slipstream, representing freedom and control and abandon all at once.

14\. Music  
He loves it when Beka blares her rock music collection while piloting; Andromeda hates it.

15\. Silk  
He compares sliding into _Andromeda_ 's hangar bay to sliding between silk sheets for organics.

16\. Cover  
They cover each other's backs in the firefight, and when it's over they're both intact, their crew whole and healthy, and they find relief in each other.

17\. Promise  
She can't hear him, but he promises never to die and leave her like organic crews do.

18\. Dream  
He tries out the voice synthesizer Harper installed in the upgrade, and with one word it's like a dream come true: " _Hello_."

19\. Candle  
Ignatius liked candles, and so does the _Maru_ , even though they bother Andromeda to no end, messy and hazardous and uncontained, like life.

20\. Talent  
She has a talent of saying exactly the wrong thing to annoy him and Beka at one stroke.

21\. Silence  
He spent forty-odd years in silence, yearning to speak to the family who walked his decks, _his_ family.

22\. Journey  
It took her a long time to reach this point, where 'military' is less important than 'right'.

23\. Fire  
Fire ravages her decks and oh my god it _hurts_ stop it please please—

24\. Strength  
She was the soldier, he was the homebody, but he could be strong for her when she needed it.

25\. Mask  
Andromeda wears a mask over her pain and keeps scanning the surrounding area, while Beka screams in misplaced fury and terror.

26\. Ice  
When he chooses a physical form to represent himself, he chooses ice blue eyes and pale hair to contrast with her dark beauty.

27\. Fall  
She's never gotten over the Fall of the Commonwealth and she never will, but he's never lived in a universe where it wasn't real.

28\. Forgotten  
He loves her, but he can't forget the dismissive way she's talked about him in the past.

29\. Dance  
Navigating the slipstream is a delicate dance, and Andromeda's not certain she's better at it than he is.

30\. Body  
Harper built him an avatar, seemingly amused and disappointed in equal measure, but when he opened his eyes for the first time, there she was, right there, waiting for him.

31\. Sacred  
There's something sacred about a captain/ship bond, so she refrains from saying anything bad about Ignatius Valentine, regardless of how much truth she knows.

32\. Farewells  
Her goodbye is cold and formal and military, and he hates it.

33\. World  
She can save worlds with the barest of efforts; he can't even save her, no matter how hard he tries.

34\. Formal  
He will _never_ get used to dinner parties, especially with her obsessive-compulsive need to make sure that every tiny little detail is right.

35\. Fever  
There was something almost feverish about her desire to restore order; his own laid-back acceptance of virtual anarchy annoyed her more often than not.

36\. Laugh  
Harper makes her laugh, and he doesn't bother to hide his jealousy.

37\. Lies  
She lied to him about the mission Dylan was sending Beka on; he was pretty sure he would never forgive her for that.

38\. Forever  
Artificial Intelligences live forever, or close enough; it didn't make losing people any less painful.

39\. Overwhelmed  
Having a full AI overwhelmed him for a while, and he resented her for not noticing.

40\. Whisper  
An innocent whisper to Doyle annoyed Andromeda so badly that she stopped talking to him for days.

41\. Wait  
She'd always hated waiting, and when Tyr had the _Maru_ , well, that was even worse.

42\. Talk  
When Beka sought her out for "The Talk", Andromeda wasn't sure whether to be amused or frightened.

43\. Search  
As he watched his crew search for a ship in a black hole, the proverbial needle in a haystack, he had no idea that his life (and theirs) were about to change forever...

44\. Hope  
"On the starship _Andromeda_ , hope lives again," he mocked her bitterly, and she left him behind forever.

45\. Eclipse  
The memory of the first time he saw her eclipses even the memory of being kidnapped by Gerentex.

46\. Gravity  
He 'accidentally' shorted out his artificial grav systems just to piss off her avatar, but it pissed off Beka instead, and he never tried that again.

47\. Highway  
After careful thought, she came to the conclusion that "My way or the highway" wasn't such a great philosophy after all.

48\. Unknown  
Love is an unknown variable, call it _x_ ; call the lover _y_ ; _x_ – _y_ = _r_ , where _r_ is the mathematics of tears.

49\. Lock  
She wanted to lock hangar 17 and keep him there forever, but instead she opened the doors and let him go.

50\. Breathe  
It's a good thing machines don't need to breathe, because at that moment, hearts shattered, the _Eureka Maru_ and the _Andromeda Ascendant_ both would have forgotten how.


End file.
